I don't use the browser much in my day to day usage of my blackberry so I'm not as concerned with "internet speed" (mainly why I didn't do a Bold upgrade and got the 8900 with 3.2 mp camera).

But I have noticed that Wi-fi is faster when uploading images to flickr (4 year old boy...). It's snappy, but again, I don't use it that often.

So I'm wondering - should I turn off Wi-fi most of the time, so that it's not constantly scanning for the network in order to save me some battery life? Also, I'm not connected to a wi-fi network at work, so most of my day is outside the range of the wi-fi network i'd connect to.

Is there significant battery life savings to be gained from disabling Wi-fi or is it negligible?

well technically i quess it would improve battery life since its not on....
but the wifi is optimized for the blackberry and doesnt really affect the battery that much to begin with.
i dont turn off wifi and am connected to UMA everywhere i go. battery life has never been a problem.

It makes sense to me that running another radio to maintain a Wi-Fi connection would impact battery life negatively, but as my 8900 is only a couple of days old I haven't tested yet to see just how great the effect is.

It's always been said that running Bluetooth all the time also negatively affects battery life, but as my car links to my phone through Bluetooth and I always want my car to link automatically when I start it, I leave the Bluetooth radio on all the time and can't even say what battery life might be with it off. The few times when I travel and don't drive I often turn Bluetooth Off and can't say I notice much greater battery life than I get at home with it On all the time.

I will try this though now that I have a rough idea of daily battery life with Wi-Fi Off - I'll leave it On all day and see how great the difference is.

Any application including Wi-Fi, when open, uses the battery. How much battey is used depends on the OS (as some users claim), your individual phone/battery, etc. One way to test this is to have "Wi-Fi on" on one day and "Wi-Fi off" another day and see how much more is used on the day the Wi-Fi was on.

Wifi definitely drains the battery. If you arent using it, turn it off. I see a difference between when I have it on and when I have it off. I am only on .114 so maybe the later OS's help in this area.

One way to test this is to have "Wi-Fi on" on one day and "Wi-Fi off" another day and see how much more is used on the day the Wi-Fi was on.

So today I decided to do just this. Normally I do not leave Wi-Fi on unless I'm going to be using it - really just a few minutes a day most days. But today I turned it on shortly after unplugging the 8900 after it's nightly charge and left it on all day long. Today was a more or less typical day - normal email volume, some texting, several phone calls but nothing too long. It's now the end of the day and I have had both Bluetooth (my car connects via Bluetooth and I often transfer a call to a Bluetooth headset when I get one so I have always left Bluetooth on all the time) and Wi-Fi on all day long. I now have 70% of charge left which is just about typical for a day like today.

In other words - though in theory I must believe that running another radio will drain the battery faster than not running it, I honestly can't see any noticable difference in battery life.

Clearly, having 70% of the charge left after 13-14 hours (from 8:00am? to 10 pm) of use is very good even with a light use. Have you tried the same with the "Wi-Fi off"? You will never have the same usage each day. With "off", there may be more of the charge left. I don't think that would any significant savings in battery life.

Clearly, having 70% of the charge left after 13-14 hours (from 8:00am? to 10 pm) of use is very good even with a light use. Have you tried the same with the "Wi-Fi off"? You will never have the same usage each day. With "off", there may be more of the charge left. I don't think that would any significant savings in battery life.

Yes - before yesterday I never ran Wi-Fi unless I specifically was going to use it - I even have the left convenience key programmed to access the Manage Connections app so I could more quickly turn it on.

Typically I would end a day with anywhere from 50% to 80% of battery left - it depended on how much calling / texting / emailing I did but even more how much playing I did - the backlight and active "messing around" with the device seemed to sap the battery as quickly as anything else did.

I learned a couple of years ago with earlier Blackberries that leaving the Bluetooth radio on all the time didn't make such a huge dent in battery life and was a good use considering how much more convenient it was for me. After this test I guess I could conclude that leaving Wi-Fi on all the time is similarly not so bad for battery life.

I don't think WiFi drains my battery any more than no WiFi. Mine connects at my house all the time, and at my office some of the time (Router is far away, loses signal sometimes). But my battery lasts 2-3 days consistently mainly depending on how much I talk. The rest of the use is consistent.

At this point I've come to exactly the same conclusion. Yesterday was the second day I left Wi-Fi turned "On" (for the entire 24 hours this time) and at the end of my day when I plugged in for the overnight charge I was at 70% remaining, and I've never seen much better than that ever - even with Wi-Fi "Off" (the only day I've seen better was one weekend when I had no phone calls and almost no emails).

One thing that may help battery life is I update Berryweather every 2 hours - with Wi-Fi "On" this happens very quickly but with it "Off" the device has to run at fairly high power to update over EDGE - at my house the signal is not the greatest.